The Publishers Association (PA) has criticised the government's response to a House of Lords report on AI, saying that it has failed to make "any tangible commitments to protect the creative industries against mass copyright infringement".
OpenAI claimed it's "impossible" to build good AI models without using copyrighted data. An "ethically created" large language model and a giant AI dataset of public domain text suggest otherwise.
A federal judge in California this week dismissed four of six claims made by authors in a now consolidated lawsuit alleging that Open AI infringes their copyrights. But the court gave the authors a month to amend their complaint, and the suit's core claim of direct infringement-which Open AI did not seek to dismiss-remains active.
Over millennia publishing has cycled through scepticism, experimentation, iteration, improvement, and ultimate acceptance of new technologies. From clay tablets to papyrus, printing presses to desktop publishing, and bound books to ebooks, publishing has always experimented and innovated. Read more
Novelists and poets, Bernardine Evaristo, Jeanette Winterson, Stephen Marche and others, consider the threats and thrilling possibilities of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (A.I.) has struggled to stay in the good graces of writers and readers this past year. Reports of companies and individuals using A.I. to spread misinformation, infringe copyright and steal authors' identities have dominated discussions of the technology's role in the books we consume.
The conversation around artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications for publishing and the wider creative industries is very much live. Over the last year, every corner of our industry has been confronted with the colossal innovation in the generative capability of this new technology, with little known as to how it will impact our sector.
The Authors Guild and 17 authors including George R R Martin, John Grisham and Jodie Picoult have filed a class-action suit against OpenAI for copyright infringement of their works of fiction and "on behalf of a class of fiction writers whose works have been used to train GPT". Read more
New copyright law in Canada has been described as a disaster that can spread, with dire effects for authors and publishers alike. Considerable concern was expressed in a panel at the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two. about the effect of the changes to the law, the consequences of which are already apparent. Read more
Creative Commons | Latest changes in the book trade 7
The current situation in the book trade is one of rapid change. It's important for writers to understand what is happening as it will impact on their own chances of getting their work published and how it will be published. This newly revised series will look at the changes in the book trade, with a different focus each week. Read more
Copyright under pressure | Latest changes in the book trade 6
The current situation in the book trade is one of rapid change. It's important for writers to understand what is happening as it will impact on their own chances of getting their work published and how it will be published. This newly revised series will look at the changes in the book trade, with a different focus each week. Read more
A recent Publishing Perspectives story throws light on the burgeoning market for writers' work in China. The founder, Luo Li, has recently left the country's largest online literature site Quidian, charged with stealing copyrights that belonged to Quidian's parent company, Shanda Literature. Read more
In a column written for the Bookseller, agent Peter Straus, who is MD of Rogers, Coleridge and White and also President of the UK Association of Authors Agents, has questioned whether it makes sense any longer for publishers to insist on signing contracts for the legal term of copyright. Read more
After a slow start, objectors have finally been getting their arguments against Google's plans in before the closing date of last Friday, 4 September. Read more
Authors should get better discounts on the books they buy direct from publishers, claims Philippa Milnes-Smith, the President of the UK Association of Authors: 'If an author can make significant sales on his/her behalf should this not be actively facilitated?' Read more
J D Salinger is suing the pseudonymous author who is planning shortly to publish a sequel Salinger's famous novel Catcher in the Rye presents what looks like a strong case of invasion of copyright. Read more
Google's recent class action settlement in the US will award sweeping rights to manage and sell digitised versions of every work published or made available in the US. The settlement allows Google - which has already digitised more than seven million books - the non-exclusive right to digitise every book published before 5th January this year. Read more
Working with the Publishers' Licensing Society, the Royal National Institute for the Blind in the UK has initiated and funded Focus, an £800,000 ($1,187)project to publish large print books. It is publishing the books in association with BBC Audiobooks, Penguin, Random House and HarperCollins. Read more
It may seem like old news now, but News Review has been on holiday so it seems worth tracking back to Amazon's announcement of its new version of the Kindle (see News Review 2 February), which became available last week, only in the US, although wider release is expected to follow soon. Read more